Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Yesterday, after my trip to the prison, I had a meeting with key leaders and staff of the group called SPARK(Solidarity for Peace And Reunification of Korea). SPARK is the group that organized the news conference and protest two days ago at the HQ of the US-South Korea military war game. They are one of the most active peace groups in the country and have been a Global Network affiliated member for the past couple of years.

They first wanted to talk about the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference that will be held at the United Nations in May of 2010. At this time there will be intense global pressure on the US and other nuclear powers to honor their promise under the NPT that if non-nuclear countries would not develop nuclear weapons then the nuclear biggies would get rid of their own. So far the nuclear giants have been very slow to dismantle their nuclear forces while lecturing the rest of the world about the evils of nukes.

A coalition of peace groups from around the world will hold an international conference and protest in New York City on May 1-2, 2010 to try to enliven the NPT process. The SPARK representatives were glad to hear I am on the planning committee for the conference and asked that I relay their concerns that some attention at the event be given to the dangerous US nuclear "umbrella" that now exists on the Korean peninsula and in nearby Japan. In other words the US harshly condemns North Korea for trying to develop nuclear weapons but the US has had nukes in this region since the end of WW II and is the only country that has used them. On top of that the US is now expanding its "conventional" military capabilities in this part of the world which only makes North Korea and China feel more insecure.

I promised that I would pass on their concerns and have already sent an email to the chair of the conference planning committee with their suggestions.

They also expressed deep concern about NATO expansion into East Asia. Using the term "Global Partnership," rather than full NATO membership, the US has recently brought Japan, South Korea, and Australia into NATO which is becoming a global military alliance that is being used to surround Russia and China and wage war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Another key point they stressed was the concept of "Strategic Flexibility" which is a new agreement between the US and South Korea which gives the US military the right to use bases in South Korea to help wage war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Originally, the US was only allowed to use its military bases in South Korea as a "defensive shield" to protect against attack from North Korea. Strategic flexibility opens the door to using South Korea as a jumping-off-base to wage aggressive war in other parts of the world. This agreement further testifies to the colonial status
of South Korea.

United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-moon is from Korea and prior to heading the UN was the Minister of Foreign Affairs for South Korea. It was Ban Ki-moon who helped push this new "Strategic Flexibility" agreement into action.

The fear on the part of SPARK is that the next step to follow "Strategic Flexibility" will be to have the military forces of South Korea used in US and NATO global interventionary missions. SPARK is fighting a lonely battle inside South Korea as few are talking about these dangerous developments.

At the end of the meeting SPARK leaders said they would like to explore ways to expand the working relationship with the Global Network in the near future. That is a good sign for us. We need a much closer relationship and some members of the Global Network board have been requesting that we do this very thing. So it will be good to report to them that this relationship will be flourishing.